Afghan Withdrawal to Be Gradual

By

Stephen Power

Updated Dec. 6, 2009 10:03 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's national security adviser said the U.S. wouldn't pull all its military forces out of Afghanistan in 2011, calling the president's timetable for withdrawal from the country "a ramp" and "not a cliff."

"We are here to make sure that Afghanistan succeeds. We can't want this any more than the Afghans do," Retired Gen. James Jones said on CNN's "State of the Union." He added: "We're going to be in the region for a long time,"

ENLARGE

U.S. Marines escort new Afghanistan National Police officers to their base in Khan Neshin in the volatile province of Helmand. The police officers will be part of a mentoring program and work alongside the Marines.
Associated Press

Mr. Obama last week announced that he was committing at least 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan -- with a plan to begin withdrawing them in July 2011 -- in an effort to reverse gains made by the Taliban and help boost the government in Kabul. Many Republicans have criticized his announcement of a timetable, calling it arbitrary and saying it could potentially benefit U.S. enemies, by giving them an indication of how long they would have to hold out before the U.S. troops departed.

Gen. Jones, responding to such criticism, said the planned ramp-up in troop levels in Afghanistan would have "a very, very positive effect on any momentum the Taliban claims to have."

"2011 is not a cliff; it's a ramp," he said. "It's when … we'll be able to see very visible progress and be able to make a shift."

Gen. Jones didn't specify how long a withdrawal might last.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said, "We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop-dead deadline," "What we're talking about is an assessment that ... we can begin a transition, a transition to hand off responsibility to the Afghan forces."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, also speaking on "This Week," said he didn't consider the president's Afghanistan announcement "an exit strategy" but rather "a transition." He said the president's timetable wasn't arbitrary, but was based on what "our military leaders believe will give us time to know that our strategy is working."

He said the transition would begin in the less-contested areas of the country, and would involve the "same kind of gradual conditions-based transition … that we saw in Iraq."

Asked about Osama bin Laden, Mr. Gates said the U.S. hasn't had any good intelligence for "years" on the Al Qaeda leader's whereabouts. He said he couldn't confirm reports that bin Laden had been seen recently in Afghanistan.

"If, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,'' Mr. Gates said.

The president's decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan drew criticism on Sunday from Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.). Appearing on ABC News's "This Week," Mr. Feingold said the president's decision "defies common sense" because Al Qaeda "is operating all over the world" and has a "minimal presence" in Afghanistan. He said he would work to block funding for the plan but acknowledged that it would be "difficult" to stop it.

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"We are operating at huge deficits in this country, and the idea of continuing to spend for this war … flies right in the face of the American people's priority to bring spending down," Mr. Feingold said.

Addressing Iran, Gen. Jones said "the door remains open'' for that country to work with other nations to assure the world that it wasn't trying to build a nuclear weapon. But so far, the "picture Iran is painting is not a good one," he said.

The Obama administration has said it would be clear by the end of this year whether Iran was willing to work with the U.S. and other countries on the nuclear issue. Iran has said its nuclear program is peaceful and that it wants to build nuclear reactors for power generation.

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